1. Field of the Invention
The disclosure is directed to providing alerts, vouchers, or coupons once a plurality of geo-fences has been breached a number of times.
2. Description of the Related Art
A geo-fence is a virtual perimeter surrounding a real-world geographic area. A location-aware device (i.e. a device that can determine its position) can be loaded with a geo-fence. The device compares its position to the coordinates of the stored geo-fence. If the device enters or exits (i.e. breaches) the geo-fence, the device can display a notification to the user and/or send a notice to a remote computer.
In some situations, the party that setup the geo-fence may wish to track the number of times a user enters or exits the geo-fence, whether or not the user re-enters the geo-fence within a certain period of time, the order that the user proceeds from one geo-fence to another, and the like. For example, a chain of restaurants or shops may wish to reward customers who visit a given number of different locations over a period of time by sending them a discount coupon or some type of promotional voucher. Alternatively, the proprietor of a single shop or restaurant may wish to reward repeat customers with such offers.
As another example, a parking garage or set of parking spaces, such as the street parking zones maintained by a municipality, may have a restriction that vehicles may not revisit the same location within a specified time, or that the parking spaces may not be used more than a certain number of times within a given period of time. The operators of such a parking facility may wish to alert customers that they have exceeded their allowed number of visits.
Accordingly, the various embodiments track, among other things, the number of times a user enters or exits one or more geo-fences, the order in which the user enters and exits related geo-fences, the time the user spends inside or outside one or more geo-fences, and the like.